Poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate), or pHEMA, and its functional derivatives have been the most widely used biocompatible hydrogels in tissue engineering. Existing applications include ophthalmic devices, cartilage replacement, spinal cord injury repair, carriers for drug or growth factor delivery, dental cement or medical sealant, coating for medical devices, and temporary (burnt away eventually) binder for the fabrication of ceramic scaffolds, and the like. However, its application as collagen-mimicking scaffold for artificial bonelike materials have been limited by the lack of an efficient technology to enable high affinity integration of pHEMA with bulk calcium phosphate bioceramics, especially hydroxyapatite (HA). A urea-mediated mineralization method that could lead to high-affinity integration of HA on the surface of pHEMA hydrogel and pHEMA-based hydrogel copolymers has been developed. However, high-affinity integration of HA with pHEMA-based hydrogel at a high mineral-to-gel ratio throughout the 3-D scaffold has not been achieved or reported in literature.